The Society for the Arts in Healthcare (SAH) requests a grant to support a planning conference March 7-9, 2001 at the Veterans Affairs Education Center, Durham, NC to develop model strategies and protocols for using, and determining effectiveness of arts, and humanities activities in conjunction with the diagnosis and treatment of people living with Type 2, adult onset diabetes. Conference results will be disseminated to healthcare professionals, arts-in-healthcare administrators, artists, & therapists, and diabetes educators through conferences, websites, newsletter articles and written reports. 13 million Americans have diagnosed cases of diabetes and an additional 5 million are estimated to have diabetes without knowing it. These statistics represent a 33% increase in diabetes from 1990 to 1998. Diabetes contributes significantly to blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, hypertension, depression, and leg amputations. In general, people with diabetes have three basic needs: (1) insight and education; (2) reinforcement and support, (3) opportunities to express their feelings and emotions. Arts and humanities programs have been shown to be effective in public health education about disease, and have also shown results in effecting stress reduction in patients. SAH's conference will address ideas for establishing and evaluating arts and humanities programs for diabetes II patients and persons at risk of developing diabetes. The long range SAH project objective is to develop ethnically and culturally sensitive interventions to inform, encourage and provide outlets for self-expression, using local resources. Conference activities will include: review of existing and current research, development of measurement protocols and proposed activities, recommendations for evaluators, test sites, participant profiles and timeline. Participation will include patients, physicians, nurses, educators, dietitians, arts program personnel, diabetes researchers, behaviorists, evaluators, medical writers, arts-in-healthcare artists, administrators, and therapists, with representation from NIH, CDC, NEA, Veterans' Administration, and Dartmouth Hitchcock, Hershey, and Duke University Medical Centers. Conference will be coordinated by SAH's office in Washington, DC.